Australia-related Wikipedia articles overwhelmingly concentrate on cities, recent research has found, with negative points of a spot sometimes being “sanitised” in articles by editors – avoiding mention of discriminatory Australian government policies or violence against Indigenous people.
The debate over central questions of Australian history and identity sparks conflict between editors, with place names particularly contentious. Only about 6% of Australian places are given their First Nation name along with an English name on Wikipedia.
However, although many parts of the nation will not be represented, particularly near the dry center, a lot of well-developed articles have been written about fictional places.
This features a 5,000 word article about Erinsboroughthe fictional Melbourne suburb during which the TV soap Neighbors is ready (edited by 252 people). Other articles about fictional places include: Mount Thomasthe town where the tv series Blue Heelers was set, and Summer Baythe setting of the TV soap Home and Away.
We analyzed More than 35,000 entries about Australian places in the first English-language edition of Wikipedia, including greater than half 1,000,000 edits of those articles. We also interviewed 14 lively editors of articles about Australia. Our project is the primary to research Australian Wikipedia entries.
We found that many Wikipedia editors experienced burnout after becoming embroiled in disputes over controversial topics. Among probably the most contentious issues were republicanism, colonization and place names.
Anyone can edit Wikipedia. However, most editors may overwrite other people's edits. When editors repeatedly disagree in regards to the content of a page, the result’s a “edit was“.
For example, in June 2023, the Queensland government officially renamed Fraser Island K'Gari. This decision sparked a year-long “edit war” over whether or not the corresponding Wikipedia article should contain this recent name. The conflict finally resulted in June 2024 with the choice to permanently move the Fraser Island entry to a brand new article named K'Gari.
Another controversial article is that this one Barmah National Park. An evaluation of the “talk” pages, which record all of the changes made, shows that there’s a long-standing dispute over whether horses ought to be considered “wild” or “feral” within the national park. More than half of the changes made to the article were reverted by other editors.
Why is that this necessary? Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia. The website and associated platforms are core components of our knowledge ecosystem and are used to coach large language models comparable to ChatGPT and as a knowledge source for Google infoboxes and voice assistants comparable to Siri and Alexa.
Therefore, it’s crucial to grasp what Wikipedia says about Australia – and what’s omitted.
Places ignored
The Australian places represented on Wikipedia are grouped around population centers. The further you get from the cities, the less items there are. There are literally only a few items in all the arid center of Australia.
Author provided, CC BY
When Europeans occupied Australia, they divided the landmass into colonies, townships, cities, and later states and suburbs. This largely ignored the methods of organizing and naming places that existed in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies.
The divisions created by European settlers guide the creation, editing, and reading of Wikipedia articles. The First Nations' ecological and cosmopolitan sense of place has difficulty finding a spot inside this nationalist structure.
Author provided, CC BY
Controversial stories
Sometimes writing a few place may be emotionally draining. One editor, Gabriel (all participants' names are pseudonyms), described the problem of writing about “truly traumatic events” like 1975 Tasman Bridge collapsethat are “still very deeply anchored within the memories of the people I do know and love”.
At other times, the crucial historical context is totally ignored. The It shouldn’t be requested The article doesn’t mention the violent expulsion of the Darug and Gundungurra peoples from Garguree, also generally known as The Gully, a bit of land in the course of the town, in 1957.
The article describes Garguree, its status as an Aboriginal place and its “long history of occupation by the Gundungurra and Darug peoples”. The transport of individuals from their homes to construct a race track is totally missing.
The editors we spoke to were mostly tech-savvy, white, educated men. By and enormous, they assumed that other Australian local editors felt the identical way.
We spoke to at least one one who identified as a girl and one one who identified as non-binary. There were roughly 2,000 lively Australian editors within the last month.
No editor we spoke to was First Nations. Previous Research has shown the various barriers that prevent First Nations people from editing Wikipedia.
Some editors told us they felt a responsibility to incorporate First Nations perspectives, even once they faced strong resistance. One, Lucas, had repeatedly attempted to incorporate First Nations place names, often unsuccessfully. He now not edits Wikipedia. “I just ran out of energy for it,” he said.
David, one other editor, described several (unsuccessful) campaigns to reflect the kunanyi/Mount Wellington double name on Wikipedia.
Gabriel said one or two editors “went around removing Aboriginal place names from all articles about Australia and Australian places”. This editing war led to a proper dispute resolution and the forbid this editor.
The editors talked about being happy with a spot and wanting to put in writing about it; the sensation of shame or defensiveness toward settler-colonial history; and experiences of discomfort with what can and can’t be written about on Wikipedia.
If we’re to navigate a world of digital saturation, it’s crucial to grasp how people play a vital role in creating and maintaining digital infrastructures like Wikipedia – and the subjective decisions they make along the best way.
